


Letting Go

by Ghostie



Category: Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Death, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 19:54:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/299455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghostie/pseuds/Ghostie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i> The Queen Thief is dancing on the rooftop, calloused toes flipping deftly across the slates. Eugenides stands invisible beside her, watching her spin and twirl against the sky. She’s beautiful like this, he reflects. So graceful, so joyful, so human. So much more than just another mortal tool. </i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Letting Go

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shewhoguards](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shewhoguards/gifts).



The Queen Thief is dancing on the roof, calloused toes flipping deftly across the slates. The chimes of the bangles swinging on her ankles and wrists are the only sounds that pierce the foggy night. Eugenides stands invisible beside her, watching her spin and twirl against the sky. She’s beautiful like this, he reflects. So graceful, so joyful, so human. So much more than just another mortal tool. As he watches her, a vision from the future flits before his eyes.

 _Years have passed. Gen stands on a shadowed balcony, loitering on the railing and talking to the sky. “I know you’re there. We’re tools to you,” he says, deliberately holding one foot over the precipice and waving it in the air. He glares out into the night; Eugenides can’t help but find his gaze piercing, even though Gen is looking in the wrong direction. “Are you going to drop me for saying that?” he asks with an impudent flip of his head._ Like you dropped her _, he doesn’t add._

Gen and his accusations fade away, leaving Eugenides and the boy’s mother alone on the roof once again. Not as alone as before; he hears a faint exhale next to him, accompanied by the scent of honeysuckle in the night air. Turning, he inclines his head to Moira, who bows in return.

“Eugenides,” she murmurs in greeting. She sighs when he turns away from her but stills to watch the thief beside him. She folds her hands primly in her white peplos, a shield she doesn’t need against the cold.

“Eugenides,” Moira repeats, his name now a rebuke rather than a greeting. “You’ve held on long enough. You know what will come to pass if you cannot let her go.”

Eugenides avoids her gaze, and instead closes his eyes and remembers his past visions. The Volcano belching smoke and fire into the sky. The screams and the silence that follows. The taste of ash and death, cloying like honey on his tongue. “I know,” he finally says.

He knows that out of the grief her broken body will inspire, Gen will become something greater than a spoiled pickpocket, something powerful and terrible enough to steal fate a different path, one that doesn’t end in ashes. But Gen needs to feel the death and the pain like a horse needs to hear the crack of a whip; it’s the shock that will allow him to change and grow.

And none but Eugenides can make it happen, because none but Eugenides has the power to hurt him enough for the pain to matter. It’s his duty to help Gen’s metamorphosis come to pass.

Duty. It binds them all. He is once again reminded of the future; of what Gen will say.

 _“I don’t owe you anything,” Gen mutters as he fiddles with another stolen gem, his anger and the blasphemy of his words making him quiet. “You might be my god. But you were hers too. You had a duty to her before I ever entered the picture.”_ A duty you failed in _are the words that hang unspoken in the air. Eugenides remains silent beside his thief; what could he possibly say?_

“Eugenides,” Moira repeats, pulling him out of the vision. “Please. For all of us. For all of _them_.” She gestures at the distant lights of the city; there is more at stake here than the life of one woman or the security of one child, no matter how much the child’s heart will break when his mother doesn’t come home that night.

Eugenides feels a twist of anger; he knows all of this. He _knows._ “A moment,” he whispers. “Give me a moment.” Duty is duty, no matter how much he wishes it wasn’t so. Gen’s mother must die. When she trips, he must let her slip through his fingers into the empty air, meeting her fate on the cold stone below. But for now, for a few more precious seconds, he can ignore his duty and watch her dance.

She twirls on a colonnade, trust implicit in every graceful move of her feet. She moves like the stone of the roof is connected to her feet, and the sky to her hands. She moves, simply put, like a falcon or sparrow who knows the ground will always be exactly where she wants it to. Like a bird, she trusts that she will be held aloft.

 He closes his eyes.

 _“She trusted you,” Gen snarls, the bandages on his stump soaked in spilled wine. His goblet slips from his unsteady grip and falls out of the window. Looking at the tiles below, Eugenides realizes the patterns of the spilled wine are eerily familiar, hearkening back to a different set of red stains. Reaching the same conclusion, Gen stares down at them. With a soft cry, he shifts his legs out of the window and tilts headlong towards the empty air. Mute, Eugenides pushes him back inside._

“Eugenides,” Moira whispers for a fourth time; he finally acknowledges her with a small nod of his head and an exhale of resignation.

They stand in silence for a moment and watch the thief together, Moira’s hand a steady pledge of support around his.

She’s a beautiful dancer. Passionate, but prone to small mistakes in her enthusiasm. Heading towards the window back inside, she pirouettes one last time and the side of her foot catches on an overturned slate. She stumbles backwards. Her eyes widen in surprise; she throws an arm out for support that isn’t there. That won’t be there. As her hair fans out against the night sky, she suddenly seems to notice Eugenides standing beside her and relaxes slightly, the fear in her eyes driven away by the knowledge of his presence. Whether she trusts him or knows and accepts her fate, he doesn’t know. Will never know.

He takes a deep breath. And despite every regret he has and every pained cry of her son that he can hear echoing back from the future, he keeps his hands at his sides.

The thief falls, and Eugenides doesn’t try to catch her.

 


End file.
